head to head · open source
sharp vs image-actions
sharp has 32,757 GitHub stars, 1,441 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. image-actions has 1,574 stars, 78 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. sharp leads on adoption by 1,981% (32,757 vs 1,574 stars). sharp is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; image-actions is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. sharp has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, image-actions 5%. sharp was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (image-processing, performance), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| sharp | image-actions | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-13 | 2026-10-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 78 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick sharp if
- You weight community size — 33K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick image-actions if
- You want the image-actions feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and image-actions fits your workflow better
About sharp
sharp is a high performance Node.js image processing library that converts large images in common formats into smaller, web friendly JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF and AVIF files, and it is built for JavaScript developers who need fast, dependency light resizing inside Node.js, Deno or Bun applications.
read the full sharp overview →
About image-actions
Image Actions is a GitHub Action from Calibre that automatically compresses JPEG, PNG, WebP, and AVIF images in pull requests, built for teams whose web performance depends on how much image weight their repositories ship.
read the full image-actions overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sharp or image-actions more popular?
sharp has 32,757 GitHub stars and image-actions has 1,574. sharp has the larger community by that measure.
Are sharp and image-actions free?
Both are open source. sharp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and image-actions under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sharp and image-actions?
sharp is written in JavaScript and image-actions in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, sharp or image-actions?
Choose sharp if you want the larger community (32,757 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose image-actions if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.